Harry Potter and the Dangers of Censorship
by Hermione Malfoy1
Summary: The title says it all. Please read and review.


Harry Potter sat at the computer, busily writing a beautiful story. He had been secretly in love with Draco for many years, but never had the courage to tell the beautiful blonde how he truly felt. So instead of venting his frustrations by taking drugs, or being cruel, or beating the shit out of random people (like that cretin of an ex-friend Ron) he went into his room, got on his computer (which consequentially he somehow had at Hogwarts although he had never had one before) and wrote fan-fiction stories. He submitted them to fanfiction.net under an alias, and always smiled when he got positive reviews.

He didn't only write about himself, but also his friends and family. Well, not that he had much family to speak of, but he did indeed write about them. And of course, most of his stories ended up with an "NC-17" rating. Not that he wrote pornographic material; it was just that, well, he was a teenager, and much of a person's life from the ages of thirteen to twenty-five is "NC-17" material. 

So he wrote. It was his way of living out lifestyles and fantasies that he could never think about exploring in his day-to-day life. Sometimes he wrote slashy stories about himself and Draco, sometimes about himself and Oliver, and sometimes (just sometimes) he wrote about himself and the entire Gryffindor Quidditch Team. Those were only on the days that he felt very frustrated, you understand. 

Sometimes he wrote sweet, innocent stories about his love for Quidditch, or maybe even parodies. But usually, his stories had scads of bad language and some violence, and maybe even some sex, so he had to rate them highly, so that impressionable young children didn't read them. 

But Harry liked what he did. Writing always gave him joy. And he definitely deserved it. 

One day, Harry went to fanfiction.net and was a little irritated to see that they had closed the site down in remembrance of those terrorist bombings in America. But he accepted it, because it had indeed been a horrible tragedy. And he felt that fanfiction.net was merely celebrating the American spirit, and that they had the right to say whatever they wanted. So he logged off of the internet and went to sleep, content in knowing that tomorrow, he could post his new story.

And it was a great story too. It had a beautiful plot. He and Draco were made to do detention in the Dark Forest, and Voldemort attacked them. He got scared, and Draco distracted the Dark Lord so that Harry could run. They hid inside of an abandoned cabin in the woods, and the fear, plus the undeniable attraction between the two of them, led to the inevitable. A sweet and copious act of love, with both of them expressing the latent frustration that had been building between the two of them since they were eleven. 

After classes the next day, Harry rushed to his room to post his story. He hurriedly logged onto fanfiction.net, eagerly anticipating the start up screen so that he could post his new tale. However, a new warning appeared at the bottom of the screen. He read the new decision with wide eyes. Fanfiction.net was no longer allowing stories with an NC-17 rating!

He could feel something funny happening to himself as he read the rest of the announcement. The owners of the website said that they had received some complaints about the adult nature of some of the stories. And since that small majority had not heeded either the rating or the author's disclaimers, and gone ahead and read the story, they had been offended. 

Harry looked down at his arm and saw that he could see through it! He could not figure out what was happening. He looked up quickly and saw that the entire room was becoming fuzzy. He started crying as he realized what was happening. In the next thirty seconds, Harry, Hogwarts, and the entire Wizarding Community had faded into nothingness.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

JK Rowling moved back from the computer in shock as all of her Harry Potter files slowly disappeared from where she had them saved. She knew what had happened, of course, but she had hoped and prayed that this wouldn't happen. She had hoped the world would learn that the opinions of the minority should not affect the lifestyles of the majority. Apparently, that was not the case.

Now her world she had spent so many hours and days of her life on was gone. Harry Potter would be no more. Just because a small group of people disagreed and found the stories bad, she would no longer be able to express herself. She leaned back in her chair, a thoughtful look on her face. What was she to do? She sighed as she began a new story, "The Fluffy Pink Bunny That Ate a Flower." She wondered how long it would be before she got hate-mail regarding that story and where it would come from.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Censorship is never a pretty thing. When you take away our rights to write and read what we will, you take away our rights as Americans. Listening to a small minority and allowing it to influence the majority is never the way to perform leadership duties. Look at what happened in Germany. A small minority of Nazis lead the entire country, resulting in mass death and destruction for the MAJORITY of the population. 


End file.
